Deerie me

Yet more underwhelming signage in the Phoenix Park about feeding the deer. These ones look as though they were probably produced by staff in the Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour at University College Dublin, as they carry the Laboratory’s logo. It’s a shame that whoever designed them never went to the first year Information Design class which I used to run at UCD. (I see that this course is still being offered, by the way, although it is now under new management.)

There is a much better piece of design on the Laboratory’s Twitter feed, shown above, but it’s not clear whether this is meant to be a poster or a one-off exhibition panel (I suspect the latter). The typography and the use of clipart could be improved, but overall the message is clearly presented. The Twitter feed has a lovely little film clip showing the first of this year’s fawns, by the way.

Meanwhile in more Phoenix Park news, a consultation process over a new set of proposals for its future has just ended. The 18 page executive summary contains the usual guff about enhanced visitor experiences (including a possible funicular railway) and potential retail areas but not a single word about the lack of recycling facilities which means that thousands of plastic bottles and aluminium cans are left strewn in the open or dumped in rubbish bins every day.

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Escape, Hide, Warn

I saw this laminated warning notice about what to do in the event of a terrorist attack on the door of a museum in Rodez, on my recent holiday in France.  Sensible advice, simply illustrated, and easily understandable even to me with my very poor French.
The town of Rodez hosted the finish of Stage 14 of the Tour de France on Saturday. A lifetime ambition of being at such an event was however thwarted by having booked to fly home from the local airport at 1725 local time – so we missed it all. And it was one of the most dramatic stages so far, with Chris Froome taking back the yellow jersey from Fabio Aru after beating him up what the BBC called the ‘short but punchy finish.’ Very bad planning!

Telling it like it is

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Pic: Diamond Geezer

I was in London for most of last week (see my other blog for the reason why). I arrived on Monday morning, halfway through a 24 hour Tube strike. To all intents and purposes it looked as though the whole system was closed down – but in fact this was not so. The incomparable Diamond Geezer spent some of his day travelling round the bits that were open, and wrote it up on Tuesday. Amongst the nuggets he uncovered was this very simple and effective piece of information design. Simple, direct, can be read by anyone in a few seconds. What more can you ask of a piece of information design?